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Robert Downey Junior Talks Real Bots to Save the World

A real flying Iron Man isn’t going to
show up any time soon. Even if he did, he’s hardly in a position to
tell everyone else to make the world a better place, and few would
likely listen. So, the real world Robert Downey Junior is talking up
his new initiative to use technology and AI to help improve the world
via his Footprint Coalition.

While the Footprint Coalition might not
have the ring of The Avengers Initiative, it plans to have plenty of
problem-solving power behind it next year when it launches
officially. Robert Downey Junior was talking about at an Amazon
Re:Mars future-navel-gazing event keynoted by the actor and in-part
hosted by Amazon Alexa as a guide to the AI future.

The actor is already producing a series
about AI for YouTube, and this new chapter in his post-Tony Stark
mission seems to tally with his interest in technology to help people
solve problems.

The Re:Mars
conference, organised by Amazon founder and rocketship
lover Jeff Bezos is focused on the benefits the world can gain from
artificial intelligence and machine learning. Many of Amazon’s AI
leaders are at the show to explain how the tech helps their business.

Attendees at the $1,999 per ticket
event (free if you’re an actual astronaut) are encouraged to
network with others, learn AI best practices and hear from tech’s
leading lights including deeplearning.ai founder Andrew Ng and Colin
Angle of iRobot. Those along with big names like RDJ, Matt Damon and
others will help grab headlines. And if others get on board, perhaps
they will help nudge the Washington fence-sitters and those driving
the back-to-coal-and-big-oil fringe back out of the spotlight.

Tracks at the event including a focus
on machine learning, robotics, automation and how they can contribute
to space exploration. They should help encourage business leaders and
others who want to learn AI trends and enable their businesses to
improve the customer experience and drive efficiency.

The show floor was full of assistant
robots from the likes of Boston Dynamics that can open doors for
people, pick up and transport objects and perform other tasks.
They’re the easy highlights of the show, demonstrating the
difficulty in making AI and ML look sexy, but if they are used in
major real-world problem solving, that are in turn promoted by big
names, perhaps there’s a brighter hope for humanity.

There isn’t much know about the Footprint
Coalition, but DRJ and his cohort have a little under
a year to get things sorted for the planned April 2020 launch. The
site only has a vanilla form for people to sign up for more
information. His quote doing the rounds of “Between robotics and
nanotechnology, we could clean up the planet significantly, if not
totally, in 10 years,” maybe massively optimistic, but if the will
is there and people get behind projects that traditional enterprises
consider unprofitable, there is always hope.

The AI YouTube show, for the company’s
subscription Red Channel, was announced last year and is still in
production, guess the guy has been busy recently! When announced, Mrs
Downey, who will produce the show, said “Robert and I share a
curiosity for AI, a complicated and often polarizing subject. Our aim
is to explore AI through a lens of objectivity and accessibility, in
a thoroughly bold, splashy, and entertaining way.”

All of which should help get the
technology behind chatbots and AI further into the public gaze.
Driving acceptance and interest will help adoption, and inventors and
innovators will look at using them in new ways to help drive a
greener, cleaner, more positive agenda forward to help move beyond
the current state of hostile politics.

Chris Knight writes about where technology will take us next, from the power of neural networks, artificial intelligence and chatbots, to the endless worlds promised by augmented and virtual reality. From the latest in gadgets and hardware to how digital businesses can use technology to grow, Chris makes the future clear and understandable to all.

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Chris Knight writes about where technology will take us next, from the power of neural networks, artificial intelligence and chatbots, to the endless worlds promised by augmented and virtual reality. From the latest in gadgets and hardware to how digital businesses can use technology to grow, Chris makes the future clear and understandable to all.

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